David Coulsdon, an art student, is astonished when his parents finally grant his request to live away from home, allowing him to move in with his gay uncle Julian and his partner. David’s father, Mark, is a politician hoping to become Prime Minister and wants David to keep an eye on Julian to ensure he doesn’t do anything scandalous that might harm his political career. His fears prove only too well founded: Julian is arrested and charged with an unthinkable crime, and David is forced to struggle between his loyalty to his father and his friendship for his uncle as he tries to uncover the truth behind the allegations. But the answers he finds are more shocking than he could ever have imagined, and the consequences may prove devastating to them all …First published in 1967, the year homosexuality was decriminalized in Great Britain, Martyn Goff’s Indecent Assault is both a compulsively readable political thriller and a fascinating look at gay men and society’s attitudes towards them at a pivotal moment in history. This new edition is the first since 1969 and joins Goff’s gay classics The Plaster Fabric (1957) and The Youngest Director (1961), also published by Valancourt.

reviews

‘Mr Goff writes well. His concern is to show the interaction of private and public life, the effect that a scandal in high places has on those caught up in it.… Mr Goff [has] both narrative power and talent.’ – Punch

‘Mr Goff writes compassionately and he has a gift for bringing out the drama in people’s ordinary confrontations with each other.’ – Sunday Times

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Martyn Goff was born in 1923, the son of a Russian fur dealer who had emigrated to London and established himself with great success. As a youth, Goff read prodigiously, and at 19 he was offered a place at Oxford to read English, but he joined the RAF and served in the Second World War instead. After the war, at age 22, Goff decided to become a bookseller: in 1946, he opened his first shop and before long opened others.

Goff published his first novel, The Plaster Fabric, in 1957, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and authors who wrote openly about it could find themselves prosecuted. However, the book earned a rave review from the popular poet and critic John Betjeman, and, as Goff has said, ‘After that, the authorities could hardly condemn it.’ He went on to publish several other novels; three of these--The Youngest Director (1961), Indecent Assault (1967) and Tar and Cement (1988)—dealt with gay themes. He has also published a number of non-fiction works, including books on collecting vinyl records.

Goff is credited by many as one of the most significant figures in modern British fiction for his involvement with the Booker Prize, which he helped to create and oversaw for its first 36 years. Little noticed and even jeered at in its early years, the Booker under Goff’s chairmanship grew into one of the world’s major literary awards, attracting an annual media frenzy and guaranteeing huge sales for winners and shortlisted novels. As Goff approached retirement in 2002, John Sutherland wrote in The Guardian: ‘The current health of English fiction can be explained in two words: Martyn Goff.’

Martyn Goff lived in London with his partner, Rubio Tapani Lindroos; the two met in the late 1960s after the latter, then a student, wrote a fan letter to the author after reading The Youngest Director. He died in 2015.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the publisher Valancourt, whose aim is to resurrect some neglected works of literature, especially those incorporating a supernatural strand, and make them available to a new readership." - Times Literary Supplement